Whenever I buy clothes they always end up getting holes quickly, I burn through socks fast, my bags keep breaking, my phones magically shit themselves and my chargers melt. I'm sick of everything being a wear part and I'm wondering where people get things that last.
I'm gonna dispute the rec on pixels. I had to give up on them (and therefore the Roms that only support them :( ). I think they might have gotten worse over the years. I had a 3a for a long time but after I had to replace that I couldn't find anything stable.
When they break the parts are $$$$ to replace. Guy at the phone repair place told me its cause they are niche so not a lot of 3rd party manufacturer. Can only buy from google. When my screen broke it would have cost more to fix than the whole thing costed to buy on eBay.
Better to buy a more popular device, can get parts more likely.
Yeah it really depends on how much you want those ROMs. I've had good luck with 2 Pixels but I 100% believe you that it's probably cheaper to buy another one than to fix one most of the time.
I haven't really found a phone that is popular and recent and friendly enough to ROMs, unfortunately. I also used to get Samsungs but they've made it difficult to install ROMs for many years now. I kind of just try to make a phone last 3-5 years and accept that it's gonna break some time around then.
ha we are on the same trajectory. Used to have samsungs for about a decade, I bought the same model (A5?) twice in a row because I lost the first one and it was doing fine for me with whatever ROM I was using at that time.
The thing with pixels is that some ROMs (like CalyxOS, which is really good) only work on them because of technical reasons I don't understand. So the shitty support is extremely frustrating.
Last year I had to replace my last functional pixel it was so much BS trying to find one that actually had an unlocked bootloader, then screens broke immediately (2 phones in a row broke on the first bump after having them less than 1 week vs the 3a which I literally dropped hundreds of times) and prohibitive to repair. Oh and because they are not very popular, there aren't as many cases available for them as for other models. I ended up settling on a phone that doesn't work properly because I just got tired and everyone was annoyed at me for being unreachable.